There are a few things in your daily life in Perth that you really never give a second thought to, but here, they become some of the most important things in your day - for example, water.... and chocolate!
There is certainly no shortage of water in Ghana – as you may have read in my last post – when it rains here – it pours! The water supply for Konongo is from a dam nearby, and is fine for washing etc (although it is a very slight brown colour!) but is not good enough quality for drinking. So we have bottled water for drinking, cooking, washing fruit and vegetables, making tea and coffee and cleaning your teeth. We probably go through 10-15 litres (24 bottles) of water per day. I feel terrible about the number of plastic bottles - thankfully they do get recycled (that's the only recycling program here). The most annoying part is cleaning your teeth, you can't just stick your toothbrush under the tap or rinse your mouth out, so you have to be prepared beforehand. However I guess its all worthwhile - we haven't had any stomach upsets so far.
Chocolate is the other essential item which is hard to come by (well essential for my sanity!) - there's no chocolate at all in Konongo. Most of the local people don't have fridges, so I think it would just melt, so no one has it. You can buy it in the capital city Accra, but its very expensive ($13 for a block of Lindt chocolate) because its all imported from Europe. So Warren and I stocked up on chocolate in Australia before we came here - would you believe Warren left out two pairs of running shoes just so that we could fit our chocolate supplies into our luggage! And we've calculated that we can eat two squares per day each! That will last us until we go to Europe in August, where we'll be able to replenish our supplies. And he'll also have to buy some new running shoes.
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